A location service enriches people's life and work by acquiring location information of a mobile terminal quickly and accurately. The location service mainly includes navigation, asset tracking, medical care, and so on. A WLAN location technology is one of location technologies that are widely used. In the WLAN location technology, multiple access points (access point, AP for short) receive a signal of a mobile terminal, each acquire a received signal strength indicator (Received Signal Strength Indicator, RSSI for short), and report the acquired RSSIs to a location server, so that the location server can acquire location information of the mobile terminal according to the RSSIs reported by the multiple APs.
Generally, to locate the mobile terminal, the location server needs to receive RSSIs reported by at least three APs. Certainly, locating is more accurate if RSSIs reported by more APs are received. However, in actual network deployment, to prevent mutual interference of signals between APs, neighboring APs all use non-overlapping channels, for example, in a 2.4 GHz (GigaHertz, GHz for short) WLAN, use channel 1, channel 6, and channel 11. If an associated AP of the mobile terminal works on channel 1, and certainly, the mobile terminal also uses channel 1, neighboring APs of the associated AP work on channel 6 or channel 11, where the associated AP is an AP associated with the mobile terminal, and the mobile terminal accesses the WLAN through the associated AP. Hence, the neighboring APs cannot receive the signal of the mobile terminal, and also cannot acquire the RSSI of the mobile terminal. Therefore, the location server cannot locate the mobile terminal because it is not ensured that the location server can receive enough RSSIs of the mobile terminal reported by APs. In the prior art, the mobile terminal switches channels and sends a message on different channels, so that the neighboring APs of the associated AP can receive the signal of the mobile terminal, thereby ensuring that the location server receives enough RSSIs of the mobile terminal reported by APs; however, generally, not all mobile terminals support channel switching, and the method can be used for locating only after the mobile terminal is improved, and thus cannot implement locating of any mobile terminal.